The art of telling an entire story with a single word: “At Merriam-Webster we know that words have the power to shape worlds both real and imagined. And we know that writing is hard work. To distill a story, its characters, and all the associated emotions into a single word is no small feat. That’s… Continue Reading
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Author Archives: Sabrina I. Pacifici
Search the list of more than 30,000 police officers banned by 44 states.
A USA TODAY Network investigation uncovered records of thousands of police officers investigated for serious misconduct. “…we’re releasing a searchable database of the most cut-and-dried cases of troubled cops—30,000 officers from 44 states who were decertified by state oversight agencies. Decertification essentially bans those officers from carrying a badge anywhere in the state. Their infractions run the… Continue Reading
How Cold Is That Library? There’s a Google Doc for That
Inside Higher Ed – “What a difference preparation makes when it comes to doing research in Arctic-level air-conditioned academic libraries (or ones that are otherwise freezing — or not air-conditioned at all). Luckily, Megan L. Cook, assistant professor of English at Colby College, published a crowdsourced document called “How Cold Is that Library?” Alas, the… Continue Reading
Terrorism, Violent Extremism, and the Internet: Free Speech Considerations
EveryCRSReport.com – Terrorism, Violent Extremism, and the Internet: Free Speech Considerations, May 6, 2019 R45713: “Recent acts of terrorism and hate crimes have prompted a renewed focus on the possible links between internet content and offline violence. While some have focused on the role that social media companies play in moderating user-generated content, others have called… Continue Reading
CRS – Congressional Access to the President’s Federal Tax Returns
Congressional Access to the President’s Federal Tax Returns, CRS Legal Sidebar, updated May 7, 2019: “On April 3, 2019, the Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee sent a letter to the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service requesting the individual income tax returns of President Trump, income tax returns for various business entities… Continue Reading
Your most sensitive data is likely exposed online. These people try to find it.
c/net: “Justin Paine sits in a pub in Oakland, California, searching the internet for your most sensitive data. It doesn’t take him long to find a promising lead. On his laptop, he opens Shodan, a searchable index of cloud servers and other internet-connected devices. Then he types the keyword “Kibana,” which reveals more than 15,000… Continue Reading
Congress’s Contempt Power and the Enforcement of Congressional Subpoenas
CRS report – Congress’s Contempt Power and the Enforcement of Congressional Subpoenas: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure Todd Garvey Legislative Attorney, May 12, 2017. “Congress’s contempt power is the means by which Congress responds to certain acts that in its view obstruct the legislative process. Contempt may be used either to coerce compliance, to punish… Continue Reading
2019 Data Breach Investigations Report
“The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) provides you with crucial perspectives on threats that organizations like yours face. The 12th DBIR is built on real-world data from 41,686 security incidents and 2,013 data breaches provided by 73 data sources, both public and private entities, spanning 86 countries worldwide. Data breaches continue to make headlines… Continue Reading
John Paul Stevens looks back on nearly a century of life and law but worries about the future
Washington Post – “John Paul Stevens spent more than a third of his near-century on Earth at the Supreme Court, where he often was on a different page from a majority of his fellow justices. “It happens so often that you have to get used to losing,” Stevens, 99, said during an interview this last… Continue Reading
The Neuroscience of Trust
Harvard Business Review – Paul J. Zack: “Companies are twisting themselves into knots to empower and challenge their employees. They’re anxious about the sad state of engagement, and rightly so, given the value they’re losing. Consider Gallup’s meta-analysis of decades’ worth of data: It shows that high engagement—defined largely as having a strong connection with… Continue Reading
When Online Survey Respondents Only ‘Select Some That Apply’
Forced-choice questions yield more accurate data than select-all-that-apply lists: “Anyone who has taken a survey has likely been given the option to “check all that apply” when answering a question. The instruction is widely used in data collection because of its ease and efficiency. But when designing an online survey questionnaire, there is more than… Continue Reading
Citation Stickiness
Bennardo, Kevin and Chew, Alexa, Citation Stickiness (April 19, 2019). 20 Journal of Appellate Practice & Process, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3375050 [h/t Joe Hodnicki and Scott Fruehwald] “This Article is an empirical study of what we call citation stickiness. A citation is sticky if it appears in one of the parties’ briefs and then… Continue Reading
